BABES IN THE WOODS 



to one side of its fonner position. Just then we heard 

 the voice of one of the parent birds, and we quickly 

 paddled to the other side of the stream, fifty feet 

 away, to watch her proceedings, saying to each other, 

 "Too bad," "Too bad." The mother bird had a 

 large beetle in her beak. She alighted upon a limb a 

 few feet above the former site of her nest, looked 

 down upon us, uttered a note or two, and then 

 dropped down confidently to the point in the vacant 

 air where the entrance to her nest had been but a few 

 moments before. Here she hovered on the wing a 

 second or two, looking for something that was not 

 there, and then returned to the perch she had just 

 left, apparently not a httle disturbed. She hammered 

 the beetle rather excitedly upon the limb a few times, 

 as if it were in some way at fault, then dropped 

 down to try for her nest again. Only vacant air 

 there ! She hovers and hovers, her blue wings fiicker- 

 ing in the checkered light; surely that precious hole 

 must be there; but no, again she is baffled, and again 

 she returns to her perch, and mauls the poor beetle 

 till it must be reduced to a pulp. Then she makes 

 a third attempt, then a fourth, and a fifth, and a 

 sixth, till she becomes very much excited. " What 

 could have happened? am I dreaming? has that 

 beetle hoodooed me ? " she seems to say, and in 

 her dismay she lets the bug drop, and looks bewil- 

 deredly about her. Then she flies away through the 

 woods, calUng. "Going for her mate," I said to 

 217 



